Garden of Witches

A Cute Roguelite With a Contested Combat Overhaul

Garden of Witches, developed and published by Team Tapas, casts players as Sil, a young witch armed with an oversized pair of scissors, tasked with tracking down her chaotic, tea-party-avoiding sisters across an ever-shifting labyrinth. It left Early Access and launched as a full 1.0 release, with no Early Access tag remaining on its store page, on 28 August 2026 at NZ$27.49. Reception sits at Very Positive across 403 English-language reviews (93.8% positive), and a 100-review sample pulled for this piece (87 positive, 13 negative) closely mirrors that headline split. The overwhelming majority of reviewers are charmed by the game's presentation and combat feel, but a smaller, notably detailed group, several with hundreds of hours logged since early beta, raises specific, recurring concerns about a combat rework that shipped ahead of launch, a limited pool of builds, and a hard requirement for a controller.

Confident, Adorable Combat With Real Highs

The praise in this sample is remarkably consistent in what it points to. Reviewers again and again single out the art style and character design as the game's biggest strength, comparing it favourably to Cult of the Lamb and Hades while noting it carves out its own fairy-tale identity with fully voice-acted witches and dialogue that reacts specifically to how and where the player has died in a run. The core dodge-focused combat loop is called satisfying and appropriately challenging, particularly in boss encounters, which multiple reviewers describe as genuine highlights with strong music to match. Several reviewers who have followed Team Tapas's earlier mobile work, including Bistro Heroes, describe Garden of Witches as a confident step up in scope and polish, and more than one reviewer explicitly credits the developer's continued post-launch roadmap updates and responsiveness to feedback as a reason to trust the game's future. For players chasing atmosphere, boss fights, and a story-driven roguelite with real personality, this sample suggests the game consistently delivers.

A Contested Combat Rework Divides Old and New Fans

The most specific and detailed criticism in this sample comes from reviewers who played the game across its Early Access life and returned for the 1.0 launch, and it centres on a combat system overhaul that shipped in a late Early Access patch (reviewers reference version 0.9.2 specifically). Several long-time players describe earlier builds as having had a genuinely deep spell-synergy system, citing a specific removed mechanic where a thread-attaching spell interacted with melee slashes to deal bonus damage, and argue the overhaul stripped out or flattened these interactions in the name of accessibility, leaving spells that each do one isolated thing rather than combining meaningfully. These reviewers frame the change as a real loss, arguing the game that reached 1.0 is measurably shallower in build depth than the one they fell in love with during Early Access. Newer players who only experienced the post-overhaul version generally don't share this specific complaint, since they have no earlier version to compare it against, but several of them independently arrive at a closely related criticism: that build variety within a run feels limited regardless of version, with a small relic pool, predictable upgrade offers at each milestone, and generous rerolls making it easy to lock in the same one or two dominant strategies every time. Multiple reviewers specifically flag a strong imbalance favouring ranged "mage" spellcasting builds, especially one high-damage fireball spell, over melee weapon builds, which several say removes any real incentive to experiment.

Controller-Only Play, Thin Content, and a Short Runtime

Beyond the combat-depth debate, a cluster of more concrete complaints recurs often enough to matter. The single most-repeated technical complaint in this sample is that the game has no mouse-and-keyboard support whatsoever, not even the ability to rebind mouse controls in the options menu, which several reviewers call an inexcusable omission for a PC release at this point and specifically warn mouse-and-keyboard players away from buying. Length and value form the other major thread: several reviewers report finishing the entire main story, including its free epilogue content, in around 6 hours, and while some frame that as a tight, well-paced experience, others argue it doesn't justify the NZ$27.49 asking price, especially given the limited replay incentive once a build has been found. A handful of reviewers also mention minor bugs, including a dialogue auto-skip glitch and visible frame lag during one of the chapter-ending boss fights, alongside comparatively lighter but recurring niggles like a lack of character-turning animation and generic monster variety outside the story's boss encounters. A few reviewers add that regular rooms between boss fights feel more like target practice than genuine challenges, since the enemies populating them rarely threaten a well-built character, leaving the story's boss gauntlet to carry most of the game's difficulty on its own.

Verdict

Garden of Witches is a genuinely lovely-looking action roguelite that wins over the vast majority of players on the strength of its art, voice acting, and boss-fight combat alone, and for the controller-equipped audience chasing a shorter, story-forward take on the Cult of the Lamb formula, it's an easy recommendation. But the criticism in this sample is unusually specific and well-evidenced for a 94%-positive title: a combat rework that returning Early Access fans say gutted meaningful spell synergy, a build pool thin enough that most runs converge on the same one or two combinations, and a baffling lack of mouse-and-keyboard support that will rule the game out entirely for some PC players before they even get to judge the rest. At NZ$27.49 for roughly 6 to 15 hours depending on how thoroughly you explore it, it's worth going in with those specific caveats in mind rather than treating the aggregate score as an unqualified green light.